**5.2 Teachers' perceived difficulties in instruction and interaction**

According to the interview, teachers identified difficulties in their instruction and interaction practice, involving science activities, child-centred approach, scaffolding, and child assessment.

When considering instruction practices, seven teachers reported challenges associated with the development and execution of science-based activities. They perceived these challenges to be more intricate than alternative learning activities, including language, mathematics and art. The educators confronted a dilemma in establishing an equilibrium between encouraging children's autonomous exploration and offering structured guidance throughout the scientific experimental process. These teachers held the conviction that science activities demand a methodical and scientific approach that calls for gradual, systematic guidance from the teacher. However, this level of direction could potentially curtail children's creative ingenuity during their exploratory endeavors.

*Science activities contain scientific knowledge and are fun at the same time. So the children could not control their behavior and manipulated the materials involuntarily. The teacher does not know how to control it, whether to let the children manipulate more or to guide them step by step. There is such a conflict (Ms. Wu).*

Furthermore, the teachers expressed difficulties in implementing a child-centred approach, namely, maintaining a keen sensitivity to the rapid shifts in children's interests and needs. Even as school principals and governmental guidelines encouraged educators to remain attuned to individual children's interests and to differentiate instruction accordingly, they encountered significant challenges. Integrating children's spontaneous interests into educational activities and devising differentiated lesson plans tailored to address each child's unique needs proved to be a complex task for educators. Such complexities highlight the ongoing tension between pedagogical principles and their real-world implementation within the educational landscape.

*The teacher may not be able to capture the interest of the children to extend the activity. The teacher may see that the child is interested, but he or she does not take the appropriate action to turn the child's interest into a curriculum. It is difficult for teachers to develop an activity based on children's interests to support their interests (Ms Yang).*

In the realm of teacher-child interaction, the educators involved in this study confronted obstacles in effectively posing questions to and fielding responses from, the children. Specifically, their questioning strategy tended to be circumscribed, primarily prompting children to recollect prior activities or affirm previously learned knowledge, rather than scaffold their cognitive processes or introduce more challenging tasks. In scenarios where children were unable to address the teachers' questions, the educators often stepped in to provide the answers. On the other hand, the teachers encountered difficulties when tasked with responding to children's questions that surpassed their anticipated range. Consequently, they found it challenging to decipher the children's cognitive processes and furnish suitable scaffolding or present appropriate challenges.

*I think it's still quite difficult to communicate with children because children will have all kinds of different answers. For example, last week I did an activity on the*  *Exploring Instructional and Interactional Aspects of Process Quality in Preschools and Teachers'… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112519*

*reflection of light, and when I asked the children questions, I found that they gave you different answers, even if they did not have much to do with the activity. It's hard to imagine what questions the children will ask, what they will observe, and how we should respond (Ms Duo).*

The interviewed teachers universally identified child assessment as a significant challenge in their teaching practice. They experienced a dearth of systematic observation tools or guiding frameworks to enable purposeful observation, resulting in uncertainty about what aspects to observe and how to execute such observations. A notable knowledge gap regarding child development impeded their ability to accurately document children's developmental trajectories. Moreover, deriving actionable insights from their observations, such as determining the appropriate support to provide, and identifying effective methods of delivering it, was a source of considerable confusion. This emphasises the necessity for more comprehensive training and support mechanisms in the domain of child assessment.

*We cannot always invite children who are active speakers to participate in activities, but if you do not invite them, it will affect their motivation. But if you do not pay extra attention to the group of children with low ability, you cannot give them the opportunity to improve, so they cannot improve. Because there will always be a group of children who love to speak and children who do not speak, I do not know how I can take care of them at the same time, so I can better promote them (Ms. Li).*

#### **5.3 The provision of professional development in preschools**

According to the interview, four primary types of PDs that preschool teachers typically engage in were identified:


Problem-based discussions were found to be the most common PD approach experienced by the teachers, with all of them reporting engaging in at least one such discussion each week. Teachers pinpointed three domains—pedagogical content knowledge, learning environment settings, and parent-teacher communication—as areas where they lacked confidence and sought additional PD training.

*Last semester, the director organized more training, and they would share some examples and previous experiences with us, and then we would talk about the* 

*problems we encountered and discuss them with each other. If there was something we did not understand, we could bring it up and we would work it out together (Ms Li).*

Despite receiving some level of PD training within their kindergarten settings, they critiqued these opportunities as being disjointed and deficient in post-training guidance, which is essential for the effective translation of learnt concepts into practice. This highlights a disparity between current PD offerings and the teachers' perceived needs, indicating a demand for a more integrated and practice-oriented approach to professional development. Consequently, they stressed the importance of coherent PD content that is relevant to their daily routine and that involves follow-up classroom visits to ensure the effective implementation of new strategies.

*I do not think these trainings are effective. I do not think these trainings are appropriate for everyone. When we particularly need the training content, we may absorb more of it. But I do not think that over the past 2 years, no matter what kind of training it was, it did not feel very useful or solid at the time (Ms Yao).*

In terms of the perceived efficacy of PD, teachers underscored the value of participatory training over passive listening formats. They emphasised the importance of observing practical applications of novel strategies, as such exposure was crucial to their understanding and subsequent implementation. On the contrary, PD endeavors that relied solely on the lecture-based instruction or bore little relevance to their daily teaching practices were deemed to hold minimal value. This feedback points to the necessity of experiential and contextually relevant professional development in effectively enhancing teaching capacities.

*I do not like the purely theoretical ones. Because in purely theoretical training, you just sit there and listen to the lecture, and you cannot watch him in action. So when I listen to those theoretical lectures, I really get sleepy. I prefer to see the practical operation, and in the process of practical operation, he shares his experience, and his teaching method, I think this is more practical (Ms. Cai).*
